Our Catholic school is pre-8, about 300 kids. We have 3 major fundraisers and lots of little ones. They include:

Rake-a-thon (a service to the community that gather pledges of bags raked)

Super Sunday Fun Day (a carnival type family day tha include Silent Auction, games,pancake breakfast, concession food, raffle)

Spring Fling ( formal dinner dance/silent auction for parents only)

We also are in charge of Scholastic book fair which also has a spaghetti dinner feast, a wine tasting evening, a plant sale, box tops, campbell soup labels, recycled printer cartidges, Kemps caps, apparel sales, Herbergers days, used book sales, and a few smaller ones.

Each of these events has a coordinator and a handful of volunteers. We also have a hopitality coordintor who is in charge of refreshments for all the various events at school during the year. (I.e. band and choir concerts, cirriculum night, back to school night, new family orientation, cookie walk, teacher appreciation luncheon, field days, etc.

Our PTO also funds enrichment programs such as Junior great books, Art in Adventure, Prairie Fire Theater, Science Fair, Math club and Technology Club. Again, each of these has their own coordinator.
Each class has a room parent. He/she is responsible for coomunication between the parents and the teachers. (i.e. soliciting volunteers, coordinating class parties or plays, etc.)
We also have a Buddy Family program. Each new family is paired with a family who has been at our school for at least 3 years. The Buddy family communicates with their new family monthly, making sure all questions and concers are being met. The buddy family sponsor is also responsible for attending all school events, with their new family, to make sure the new family is introduced accordingly. We have a Buddy family picinic the week before school starts as well as new family orientation.
We have guest speakers every other month, and board meetings every month. We also publish the school directory, manage the website, and provide a pto newsletter.

Everything mentioned falls under the PTO. Obviously we are directed by our principal, but it's a great working relationship. By the way, our teachers are required to attend 3/4 general meetings throughout the year!! And this year, many teachers have requested to be guest speakers about homework, establishing good study habits, seperation anxiety etc.
I think I covered about everything, however, each PTO job description ends with "other duties as assigned"

Hope this helps. I hope I didn't put you to sleep.....

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by meg:
For those of you who read my previous post, "Elected President last month almost ready to throw in the towel". I have decided to tie the towel around my head Rambo style and give this another shot. So here is the first order of business. Our PTO Responsibilities list has been ever so thoughtfully revised by our new principal.
Out of 14 PTO responsibilities :

8 involve fundraising
2 involve providing special events for teachers (which I am in agreement with)
3 are actually for the children or parent: Helping with vision and hearing test, honor
roll parties, and sending out 2 newsletters
1 Is holding a PTO meeting to pass the
principals PTO budget, one to elect officers
to raise money for the principal's PTO budget
and one in the middle at the principals
discretion.

These are not vastly different than PTO Responsibilities in the past. The difference is that in the past I spent my many hours in the school doing what I like best......helping with the kids, providing treats, making phone calls, coordinating homeroom moms and finding answers to their questions. All that time I was assuming that the PTO Officers were providing parent input to administration and certianly into the PTO budget....definitely not the case. So now that I understand that our school has our money in their account and therefore has full control over how it is spent and is not even required to inform us when and where it went, the only place I see to make a difference is to attempt to change the PTO priorities.

We are a 6th thru 8th school of about 600 students with a principals PTO fundraising goal of about 40,000. We are probably the most economically advantaged school in our area. I am quiet certian that our children would not suffer in the least if we cut back on fundraising this year to make a concentrated effort to start programs that have nothing to do with raising money and more to do with issues such as raising parent involvement. If you ask the average parent of a child in our school why they do not participate.... the majority of the time they all give the same answer. All they want is for us to raise money and we never even know where it goes.

So help me!!!!! What programs does your PTO run (other than fundraisers) that you feel really makes a difference in your child's middle school. Thanks in advance for all of your wonderful advice and because you never hear it enough......THANKS for what you do at your child's school! MEG<hr></blockquote>

It doesn't sound like you are a PTO. You are volunteers that are helping the school. I think the parents and the staff (if they get appreciation) will prefer an independant group. Parents would feel better about giving to the fundraiser knowing they ultimately have control of how the money is spent. They vote on officers, don't they. Members vote on the approval of a budget. I agree the Middle school has some real peer pressure issues and using your independantly acquired funds to promote peer guidance and activites. Plus some fun activities you'll have more support. If you provide staff appreciation and we give $125 to each staff member for classroom items and more in grants they summit; then staff will jump on. I don't know how big your district is but, you may want to see how the others do it or go to your superintentant or school board (also elected officals) and voice your concerns.

We have about 3 things that are for fundraising alone. The rest either supports itself and is a service (like Holiday Shoppe or Yearbook) or is supported by the fundraisers (Publishing Center, Family Fun night, the grant program)

We have volunteers that just help in the classroom or Library and there time is donated to the school, we don't run that. Or the school has fundraisers like Recycling or School Pictures, but that's their own thing and we only help with communication. Remember once you speak up, you are in charge. It will be alot of work.

This is a great thread...as for the events/programs that our PTSO sponsors or coordinates that I think most directly benefit the children and the entire school are:

1. Reading Incentive Program
*The children follow a path of "adventure" and progress to each stop with a completed bookmark.
2. Family Sharing & Caring Winter Wonderland
*Admission to this night is with canned food, toys, socks, hats, etc. for local adopted families and we wrap toys, make ornaments for the senior centers and have craft activities and drink donated hot chocolate.
3. Welcome Back Open house
*we provide tables of information in the gym regarding various PTSO programs, snacks in the cafeteria and time for parents to meet the teachers and see the children's classrooms.

We also do a staff appreciation event, swimming lessons, author visits, field trips, assemblies, accelerated math & reading, new computers & software and much more.

Our PTSO has became so depended on for funding that this year we are funding textbooks, instructional assistant hours, a PE teacher, school sign, yearbooks, student council, music department, library department & the list goes on and on.

We just stop and think that without the PTSO the kids would be going without all of these things because our district budget just keeps getting worse and worse with no help or end in sight! :confused:

I AM WITH A ELEMENTARY SCHOOL SO MABY NOT ALL OF OUR EVENT WILL APPLY TO WHAT YOU NEED BUT HERE IS SOMETHING WE DO...

YEARLONG
SCHOOL STORE
YEARBOOK
CAMPBELL'S
T-SHIRTS

TWICE A YEAR WE;
REED AND FEED (THE PARENTS AND CHILDREN HAVE TO READ A BOOK AND TAKE A AR TEST, THE KID RECEIVE A BOOK AND THE FAMILY GET A DINNER)
PARENT - TEACHER NIGHT
IDENT-A-KID (WE HAVE THE IDENT-A-KID GROUP COME TO THE SCHOOL AND OFFER ID CARD TO THE CHILDREN THIS IS TO HELP IF A CHILD IS LOST OR MISSING IT HELP THE POLICE IN LOCATING THE CHILD)

EVERY MONTH
WE HOLD PTO BOARD MEETINGS
PTO NIGHT (WE GET GUEST SPEAKER, FIRE, POLICE, COMUNITY LEADERS, AND TEACHER. WE OFFER A PERFORMANCE BY ONE OF OUR CLASSES OR GRADE LEVEL. WE ALSO TALK ABOUT WHAT IS GOING ON WITH OUR PTO TO KEEP OUR PARENTS INVOLVED. WE ALSO HAVE STUDY GUIDES AND METERAL THERE THE PARENTS CAN CHECK OUT TO HELP THERE KIDS)
SAC (SCHOOL ADVISORY COUNCIL, ALL PARENTS, STAFF MEMBER AND COMMUNITY MEMBER ARE ABLE TO JOIN. ALL SAC MEMBER HAVE A SAY SO IN WHAT HAPPENS AT THE SCHOOL. EACH YEAR THE COUNCIL WRITE A SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT PLAN THAT THE SCHOOL FOLLOWS AND EVERONE HAS A SAY SO. TO BE A MEMBER YOU MEST COME TO ALL SAC MEETING)

ONCE A YEAR
SAFE HALLOWEEN
CARNIVAL
KID'S KORNER GIFT SHOP
COUPONS FOR EDUCATION
BLOOD DRIVE
BOOK BOWL
OPEN HOUSE
VOLUNTEER BRUNCH
WELCOME BACK STAFF BRUNCH

WE TRY TO HAVE SOMTHING GOING ON AT THE SCHOOL EVERY WEEK, AND ALL WAYS SOMTHING DIFFERENT SO YOU HAVE CHOICES IN WHAT YOU WANT TO DO.. NOT THE SAME ALL THE TIME.

GOOD LUCK,

You guys do some great things for your schools! That is what I thought PTO is all about. My last officers meeting revealed that though they all agree that we should do more directly for the kids and not just turn all of the money over to the school to be used as part of their budget, the officers for varying reasons do not want to confront the principal. Once again I do not know what to do.

Thanks so much for the ideas!
Meg